About

$423

pledged of $250 goal

77

backers

Get a set of simple tools to help prep your wargaming miniatures to play faster and better!

In many miniatures wargames, the direction your models are facing is important: Your soldiers can only shoot in their field of view, can't respond to threats behind them, and so on. In many cases though the front and back arcs aren't obvious and unambiguous. Are they based on which way the model's face is pointing? What if the body is oriented differently? And if the torso is rotated a bit from the legs? The more dynamic and interesting a model is, the more likely it is to be hard to quickly and accurately determine its facing in play. The precise angles of the front and back arcs often matter quite a bit for various game mechanics, so this confusion and ambiguity can lead to slower play, mistakes, and---worst of all---disagreements.

Unfortunately, almost no miniatures are produced with bases incorporating built-in arcs. But you can eliminate these problems by simply painting some indicator. This might be anything from a simple mark at the dividing line to painting the two arcs in different colors---which is also a nice way to jazz up the model with a block of color complementing its paint scheme!

Painting those marks by hand isn't hard. But you need to very carefully eyeball and paint where you want the arc to be, trim the edges, check again to make sure the arc is still accurate, and repeat as necessary. It's never going to be perfect, and if you're doing a bunch of troops the time adds up. Our Arc Guides are low cost, easy tools to help you paint facing indicators on a variety of round miniatures bases very quickly and accurately.

Here's a good example of the importance of marking arcs:

A Marauder (green figure on right) attacking a Crusader (orange figure on left).

A USAriadnan Marauder (green figure on the right) moves to attack a PanOceanian Crusader (orange figure on the left) in Corvus Belli's Infinity. If the Marauder is in the Crusader's front arc then the latter has more options to respond, including shooting back. But what is the Crusader's front arc? Looking at the table from a player's high viewpoint, the most obvious reference is the angle of the legs and body. In that case the Marauder is clearly only in the rear arc. But maybe the Crusader's arc is defined by the pose of its head and weapon? That would put the Marauder in the Crusader's front arc and able to be attacked back.

Front arc defined by the legs, yielding no target.

Front arc defined by head & weapon, yielding a target!

The only way to prevent being caught by different assumptions and not have questions like this come up for debate at critical moments is to mark the bases in advance. Arc Guides are a simple, low cost tool to help ensure these marks are made quickly but very accurately.

A Crusader, 25mm Arc Guide prototype, and some paint.

Each Arc Guide is essentially a half disc that the base slides into, with a tab to help your thumb and forefinger hold the base and guide together. Once a miniature is all painted, just slide it into the appropriate Arc Guide and orient it so the guide covers either the front or rear arc.

Orienting the Crusader in the Arc Guide.

Then paint a line along the side faces of the guide, cover the whole exposed portion of the base in a different color, or do whatever you want to indicate the arcs. You don't have to worry about being too careful, because the guide blocks the other portion of the base and it's just a painting tool, so who cares what colors get on it!

Crusader with arcs clearly defined by its head and weapon rather than body and legs.

After that your miniature is all set, with a very accurate, unambiguous front and rear arc indication painted in seconds. Coming back to the original situation, there's no question that the intent is for the Crusader's front arc to be aligned with its head and weapon, so the Marauder is definitely in its field of view and subject to a counter attack!

With the red paint indicating the Crusader's rear arc, following its head and weapon, it is now clear the Marauder is in its front arc.

The models shown here are purely for demonstration, and this campaign has no official affiliation with Corvus Belli or its Infinity game.

STL Files ($1). We believe in open gaming and have made much use of others' work in our own projects. So we've made the STL files for the Arc Guides available as a free download for 3D printing! But if you are so inclined, we would love for you to donate to this Kickstarter so that other players who don't want to deal with that can get resin cast copies, and to encourage us to create more free designs in the future.

Each of the other backer levels gets you a set of resin cast Arc Guides. The master copies will be 3D printed at ultra high resolution by an industrial rapid prototyping service. We'll then mold and cast them using a full vacuum degassing and pressure chamber for producing high quality, professional parts. The reward tiers and Arc Guide sets are:

Infinity ($2). Three Arc Guides: 25mm, 40mm, and 55mm. This set is perfect for Infinity and the original inspiration for these tools. These sizes cover troops and small bots; big humanoids; and tags, remotes, and bikes.

Multi-System ($4). A big collection of nine Arc Guides: 15mm, 20mm, 25mm, 30mm, 32mm, 40mm, 50mm, 55mm, and 60mm. This should cover the vast majority of miniatures games and figures out there.

Warmachine/Hordes ($5). Four Arc Guides: 30mm, 40mm, 50mm, and 120mm. This set is designed for Warmachine and Hordes, including the colossal figures.

Rocketship Games and Arc Guides are of course in no way affiliated with Corvus Belli or Privateer Press and their Infinity, Warmachine, and Hordes games. These collections are simply to help players of those games identify what will work best for them.

The Arc Guides are all small and light, so shipping is easy. Kickstarter will add a nominal shipping fee once you select a backer level.

Unfortunately we are not able to ship internationally at this time, United States only.

We expect to deliver rewards within a few weeks after the campaign concludes successfully.

Though it is nice to have a tool to do so quickly and accurately, it's really not a hard task to paint arc indicators by hand. So Arc Guides are only worthwhile if they're low cost. We think the reward tiers here achieve that: Why not spend a couple bucks if it makes all the miniatures you spend hours painting look better, and the games you love playing go even smoother?

To hit those price points though we need to amortize several costs over a large enough number of copies. The high resolution master prints aren't cheap, resin needs to be ordered in bulk to get quantity discounts, etc.. Before purchasing those we want to be sure there are enough people out there interested in getting a set, which is exactly where this Kickstarter fits in.

Risks and challenges

This is a very low risk campaign. All of the design work has been completed, and we have already been using Arc Guides for our own painting. We have experience with resin casting, already own vacuum and pressure chamber equipment, and these are very very simple parts to cast. The ultra high resolution master copies will be 3D printed by a service we have used previously that delivers within days. We have high confidence in producing and delivering the rewards very quickly after the campaign is funded.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $2 or more
About $2.00

Infinity

Back at this level to get a set of three pressure cast resin Arc Guides: 25mm, 40mm, and 55mm. This set is perfect for Infinity, covering troops and small bots; big humanoids; and tags, remotes, and bikes.

Kickstarter is not a store.

Pledge $7 or more
About $7

Multi-System + Colossal

Back at this level to get a set of ten pressure cast resin Arc Guides: 15mm, 20mm, 25mm, 30mm, 32mm, 40mm, 50mm, 55mm, 60mm, and 120mm. This collection covers all the most common miniatures base sizes plus the extra large base used for colossal models in Warmachine and Hordes.